Ordinary Grace

Nathan Drum is husband to Ruth Drum and father to Ariel, Frank, and Jake Drum. A Methodist minister, Nathan presides over services at three different churches in the New Bremen area, including at his own church, which is directly across the street from the Drum’s house. Nathan went to college and planned to become a hotshot lawyer but was drafted into World War II, where his choices lead to the deaths of many of his soldiers. After this, Nathan joins the church. He remains virtuous throughout the novel, in the face of increasing adversity, and is always able to do the right thing in regard to his interactions with others. At the end of the novel, he is over eighty years old and living in St. Paul. 

Ruth Drum is wife to Nathan Drum and mother to Ariel, Frank and Jake. She marries Nathan believing he will become a lawyer, and afford her a life of affluent urbanity far away from her hometown of New Bremen. Instead, Nathan fights in World War II and decides to become a minister, making Ruth a minister’s wife. Ruth does fit the role; she drinks, she smokes, and the only real way she engages with the church community is through the church choir. As a teenager, Ruth was engaged to Emil Brandt, who subsequently left her for fame in New York City. Ruth likes and admires Emil until finding out he’s impregnated Ariel, her daughter, and while she ceases to be mad at him, she also never forgives him. Ruth has a running feud with Julia Brandt based on issues of class; in many ways, Julia, married to the affluent Axel Brandt, has the life Ruth foresaw for herself upon marrying Nathan. Ruth passes away from breast cancer at sixty. 

Frank and Jake’s older sister and daughter of Nathan and Ruth Drum. In the summer of ‘61, Ariel has graduated from high school and is looking ahead to her first semester at Juilliard. Ariel is a talented singer and accomplished pianist. She also transcribes the blind Emil Brandt’s memoir; through their shared time, Ariel falls in love with Emil. The two are intimate and Ariel grows pregnant. Karl Brandt, Ariel’s boyfriend, suggests she get an abortion, but Ariel refuses. Ariel is murdered on the Fourth of July; at the end of the novel, it’s discovered that Lise Brandt is Ariel’s killer. Ariel is a good sister and advises Frank on several occasions. 

Jake Drum is Frank and Ariel Drum’s younger brother, and the youngest Drum child. At ten, he retains a childlike innocence through much of the book and on multiple occasions serves as a voice of conscience for Frank. Jake has a speech impediment—specifically, he stutters, and multiple people, including Morris Engdahl and Officer Doyle make fun of Jake for this. Jake is highly sensitive about his speech impediment, at one point asking Frank if he is a “freak” because of it. Miraculously, Jake’s impediment disappears at Ariel’s funeral reception, and never returns. Jake goes on to become a Methodist minister. 

Emil Brandt is the brother Axel Brandt. Prior to World War II, Emil had a successful career writing musical scores. During World War II, he sustains an injury that leaves him blind, and one side of his face disfigured. He lives in a renovated farmhouse with his sister, Lise Brandt, who is ten years Emil’s junior. Prior to departing New Bremen, as a youth, he is briefly engaged to Ruth Drum, before abandoning her and seeking fame instead. Emil impregnates Ruth’s daughter, Ariel Drum, who is transcribing his memoirs for him. Emil is smart, non-religious, a talented musician, and morbidly depressed, trying to take his own life once during the summer of ’61 and admitting that he’s tried one time prior to that. He passes away in his fifties and is buried in the New Bremen cemetery. 

Lise Brandt is Emil’s younger sibling and Ariel Drum’s killer. Born deaf, Lise is treated like an outcast by the rest of the Brandt family, never socialized, and, once Emil is back from the war, sent to live with him. Lise can speak, but does not enjoy doing so. She has a special relationship with Jake Drum due to Jake’s stutter, and the two are able to communicate through a sort of ad hoc sign language. Jake is also the only person, aside from Emil, who can physically touch Lise—anyone else who does so sends Lise into a violent, uncontrollable panic of rage. Frank does this and is almost assaulted by Lise, and it’s Ariel’s touching of Lise that gets Ariel killed. After Lise admits to the murder of Ariel, she’s sent to Minnesota Security Hospital, where she lives out the rest of her days. Lise adores gardening, and her brother, and dislikes most everything and everyone else. 

Karl Brandt is the son of Axel and Julia Brandt and the boyfriend of Ariel Drum. He is wealthy, attractive, and headed to college at the novel’s outset. He gets along well with Frank and Jake Drum, and treats both of them nicely. He drives a red, convertible roadster and often offers the boys rides places. The night of Ariel’s death, Karl is drinking at a high school bonfire party on the shore of the river. Once it’s learned that Ariel is pregnant, suspicion falls on Karl as being Ariel’s killer, as fathering her child would have meant a future trapped in New Bremen, with a wife of lower socioeconomic status. Karl eventually reveals to Nathan Drum that he is gay, and shortly after drives his car into a tree. It is unknown if his death is an accident or a suicide. 

Gus is Nathan Drum’s war buddy. He lives in the basement of Nathan’s church for free, in exchange for performing maintenance. He drives an Indian Chief motorcycle with a sidecar. He’s often drunk, and, on two occasions, gets himself locked up on assault charges, the first time for hitting Morris Engdahl, the second time for assaulting Officer Doyle. Gus is Frank and Jake’s go-to when they seek advice from an adult, even more so than their father, effectively functioning as something akin to a surrogate uncle. After the summer of ’61, Gus marries Ginger French, who owns a horse ranch outside of New Bremen. Gus and Ginger are killed in a plane crash twelve years later. 

Ruth’s father marries Liz after his wife dies, and when Frank is still an infant. Ruth’s father employs Frank and Jake by giving them chores in the yard. He is not a fan of Nathan Drum, and Ruth Drum is not a fan of Liz. Nonetheless, the pair serve as solid support for the Drum family after Ariel goes missing and is subsequently found dead. 

Karl’s parents. Axel is heir to the Brandt brewery and extremely wealthy, at least by New Bremen standards. After Ariel is found dead, the two retain a lawyer for Karl and keep their son sequestered from the rest of New Bremen. Eventually, the Brandts and Drums attempt to make amends, but fail in doing so in large part due to a running feud between Ruth Drum and Julia Brandt, with the latter telling Ruth that Ariel was attempting to social-climb via forcing Karl to marry her, after she got pregnant. Ruth responds that Julia did just this in marrying Axel. None of the Brandts attend Ariel’s funeral, save for Emil. 

Warren Redstone is Dakota Sioux and Danny O’Keefe’s great-uncle. He is a World War One veteran and received a Purple Heart for his service. He spends his time fishing from his lean-to on the bank of the river. Redstone is presented as a dubious character for much of the novel. He’s in possession of both Bobby Cole’s glasses and Ariel Drum’s necklace. Frank and Jake also find Warren going through the pockets of the Skipper, New Bremen’s second death of the summer. Once it’s known by Doyle that Redstone is in possession of Ariel’s necklace, the authorities go after him; Frank finds Redstone hiding on the train trestle where Cole died and allows him to escape. Redstone has had trouble with the law in the past, gaining a rap sheet by trying to start an uprising against the government that garnered him the attention of the FBI. While in college, Frank seeks out and finds Redstone, who lives in Granite Falls, near to New Bremen. Redstone consistently serves as a voice of secular wisdom for Frank in the novel, and offers a version of the history of the Minnesota River Valley very different from the Anglo-centric history Frank has learned in school. 

Bobby Cole is a developmentally-disabled adolescent roughly the same age as Frank Drum. He is the novel’s first death and is killed on the railroad trestle when a train hits him while he’s sitting on the tracks. Officer Doyle suspects foul play, but this turns out to be a dead end. Frank says that Bobby Cole embodies simplicity, and in this way is perhaps the New Bremen community personified: a simplistic way of life that won’t survive what the 1960s brings to American culture. 

The Skipper is an itinerant found dead on the shore of the river by Warren Redstone; from their spot on the trestle, Frank and Jake see Redstone going through the Skipper’s pockets. He is buried in the New Bremen cemetery. We learn through a note on the back of a faded photograph that the man has a wife and child, and was likely a war veteran. He serves as symbol for the way armed conflict has and will continue to rend apart communities like New Bremen, and the families that comprise such communities. 

Morris Engdahl is New Bremen’s town tough. He drives a black Deuce Coupe with flames down the vehicle’s sides, didn’t finish high school, and likes to drink. At the novel’s outset, he’s in jail for getting in a fight with Gus and makes fun of Jake Drum’s stutter; for the latter, Frank and Jake hit out the headlights and taillights of his car with a tire iron. Later, while at an old quarry that is also a popular swimming spot, Frank gets in a fight with Morris while defending Ariel’s honor, pushing him into the water. Morris can’t swim and is saved by Frank but vows also to kill him. Morris is suspected as Ariel’s killer for a brief while but his alibi is airtight: he is with an underage girl, and is subsequently arrested under the Mann Act. Out on bail and drunk at work, Morris dies from getting in a fight with his foreman at the cannery where he works. While difficult to sympathize with, Krueger does paint Engdahl as multi-faceted, someone with insecurities, shortcomings and a difficult upbringing who seems destined to—and ultimately does—go nowhere.

Officer Doyle is a New Bremen police officer and war veteran. He hangs out with Gus, drinking beer, and has a sadistic streak that manifests through such actions as blowing up bullfrogs with fireworks. He is class-conscious, too, letting Frank free after suspecting him of vandalizing the Brandt’s house. Doyle epitomizes New Bremen’s working-class moral majority and quickly fans the flames of Karl’s revelation to Nathan Drum that he, Karl, is gay. Doyle is abuse-of-power personified, and has it out for Warren Redstone, who he is sure is behind Ariel’s murder.